Wildfire smoke
800-acre fire near Orlando
Named source 800-acre fire near Orlando
Daily PM2.5 peaked at 60.5 µg/m³ near Orlando across 2 covered metros home to 4.7 million people. 2 metros placed a top-ten day in their record.
Counting the extra PM2.5 above each metro's typical day, this event handed the average affected resident ≈ 3.8 cigarettes. Across everyone living in the affected metros, that is the collective equivalent of ≈ 18 million cigarettes. An awareness illustration of outdoor exposure at 22 µg/m³ per cigarette (Berkeley Earth), counting only the event's ranked days; not a medical dose.
Episode peak
-- cigarettes
The smoke map's scale, replayed over this event: the surface interpolates between covered metros' daily records, framed to the affected region. Hover for a reading, click a metro to pin it to the card. Days a monitor did not report draw nothing.
What happened, in the record
Contemporaneous reporting identifies an 800-acre fire near Orlando beginning May 26 and says smoke covered Orlando on May 27.
Sequence: Jacksonville (May 26) → Orlando (May 27)
Affected metros
| Metro | Peak PM2.5 | Cigarettes, whole event | Peak day | All-time standing |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Orlando-Kissimmee-Sanford, FL | 60.5 µg/m³ | 2.8 | May 27, 2001 | #2 of its top days |
| Jacksonville, FL | 55.1 µg/m³ | 7.2 | May 28, 2001 | #7 of its top days |
"Cigarettes, whole event" totals a metro's ranked event days at 22 µg/m³ per cigarette: what a person outdoors there breathed across the event, as the illustration. "All-time standing" is where this episode's days sit in each metro's ranked record (worst-area measure, since 1999). Full local context is on each metro's Air Records page.
The evidence
EPA AQS monitor qualifier 6
- AQS PM2.5 qualifier E — Forest Fire. EPA AQS carries an agency-submitted request-exclusion qualifier (E, Forest Fire.) on 2 PM2.5 samples in the candidate CBSA on 2001-05-26, identifying wildfire smoke as affecting the samples. A request-exclusion qualifier is an official submitting-agency causal claim, but this endpoint does not establish EPA concurrence.
- AQS PM2.5 qualifier E — Forest Fire. EPA AQS carries an agency-submitted request-exclusion qualifier (E, Forest Fire.) on 2 PM2.5 samples in the candidate CBSA on 2001-05-28, identifying wildfire smoke as affecting the samples. A request-exclusion qualifier is an official submitting-agency causal claim, but this endpoint does not establish EPA concurrence.
- AQS PM2.5 qualifier E — Forest Fire. EPA AQS carries an agency-submitted request-exclusion qualifier (E, Forest Fire.) on 2 PM2.5 samples in the candidate CBSA on 2001-05-26, identifying wildfire smoke as affecting the samples. A request-exclusion qualifier is an official submitting-agency causal claim, but this endpoint does not establish EPA concurrence.
- AQS PM2.5 qualifier E — Forest Fire. EPA AQS carries an agency-submitted request-exclusion qualifier (E, Forest Fire.) on 1 PM2.5 sample in the candidate CBSA on 2001-05-28, identifying wildfire smoke as affecting the sample. A request-exclusion qualifier is an official submitting-agency causal claim, but this endpoint does not establish EPA concurrence.
- AQS PM2.5 qualifier E — Forest Fire. EPA AQS carries an agency-submitted request-exclusion qualifier (E, Forest Fire.) on 2 PM2.5 samples in the candidate CBSA on 2001-05-27, identifying wildfire smoke as affecting the samples. A request-exclusion qualifier is an official submitting-agency causal claim, but this endpoint does not establish EPA concurrence.
- AQS PM2.5 qualifier E — Forest Fire. EPA AQS carries an agency-submitted request-exclusion qualifier (E, Forest Fire.) on 2 PM2.5 samples in the candidate CBSA on 2001-05-27, identifying wildfire smoke as affecting the samples. A request-exclusion qualifier is an official submitting-agency causal claim, but this endpoint does not establish EPA concurrence.
Agency and publisher pages 1
- Smoke Mixes With Fog to Close Major Fla. Roads Contemporaneous reporting says an 800-acre fire near Orlando began on May 26 and covered the Orlando area in smoke on May 27. This corroborates wildfire smoke near the Orlando portion of the event, but does not establish the Jacksonville monitor's source contribution.
What remains uncertain
- AQS qualifiers are submitting-agency causal flags and do not by themselves establish EPA concurrence.
- The evidence does not establish that the Jacksonville observation was affected by this fire.
Status and provenance
Research preview: this record carries research-only status and its boundaries, cause, and name may change as evidence review completes. Grouping policy common_sense_root_cause_grouping.v2. The cause label reflects the assembled evidence above, not an IAQng detection formula.